4 ms·

From a technological perspective, everything you say is true, and FreeBSD is better in so many regards. But, compatibility and community support is just a deal

From a technological perspective, everything you say is true, and FreeBSD is better in so many regards. But, compatibility and community support is just a deal breaker. The jails vs docker argument is a good example: while technically better, Docker (or rather, cgroups and image distribution) have been standardised and have tremendous community adoption. FreeBSD cannot tap into any of this at all. Yes, jails might be better, but because they lack widespread adoption, they’re far less useful. It’s a sad state of affairs, I wish things went otherwise, but I feel Linux is sometimes a good example of the “worse is better” approach at work.

nullify88 4y ago
Perhaps VHS vs Betamax is a suitable equivalent to FreeBSD vs Linux.
- philistine 4y ago
  Your comment implies the old trop that Beta was much better quality than VHS, but Betamax's reputation for better quality was marketing spin and conflation with Betacam, Sony's pro version. In reality, Betamax was nearly indistinguishable from VHS.
  - usefulcat 4y ago
    Obviously it’s been quite a long time, but as someone whose first VCR was beta, this rings true. If nothing else, I definitely don’t remember a noticeable quality difference when we later switched to VHS.
nmz 4y ago
Nobody ever adopts it because nobody wants to support it, ergo nobody ever adopts it and nothing ever improves. Gotta love this little cycle of mediocrity the software world has going on.
- astrobe_ 4y ago
  This type of circular argument sometimes hit a nerve when it about a thing cares about, but lets remember that the literal sense of "mediocre" is "middle" or "average", so its kind of a tautology to say that in general, software is average. It takes true nerds (or "geek" in the sense it had around 2000, when it was still a bit derogatory and not yet a fashionable identity marker) to go off the beaten path.
  - nmz 4y ago
    Guess I mispoke, if everyone adopted it, then that quality of software would become the new average. this software is just inferior, which in software usually means that its harmful. Adj. 1. mediocre - moderate to inferior in quality; "they improved the quality from mediocre to above average"
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I think one of the biggest mistakes the FreeBSD team made(in terms of more widestream adoption) was abandoning the Linux syscall table layer. It's still there, but it's stuck on 2.6.x last time I looked. It's a lot to maintain, yes, but it would help secure a lot more users like me, who are highly technical, potential contributors, who like a lot of the features(jails, better ZFS integration, easy to set up dtrace support etc), but also like to play around with bleeding edge software that tends to support Linux/OS X first, and maybe BSDs by accident, if you're lucky. I think keeping this layer in development, maybe having a similar setup to SmartOS, letting you set up "Linux jails" or something like that, would significantly help adoption in the desktop/workstation space. This would of course lead to recruiting more developers, and so on. Drivers are trickier, but I actually never had driver issues the last time I used FreeBSD as a daily driver(for about 6 months a few years ago, until I ran back to Linux with my tail between my legs). It would be nice if at some point many decades ago, the Unix world had agreed on a standardised kernel API for modular drivers, so that drivers could more easily be ported between kernels, but it's way too late for that at this point I guess. And maybe not even technically feasible, but I'm not qualified to comment on that.
- fuckstick 4y ago
  > It's a lot to maintain, yes, but it would help secure a lot more users like me, What an understatement. The modern Linux syscalls are tightly coupled to the implementation of Linux. Special fds, io_uring, robust lists, etc etc … There’s a reason why Microsoft said fuck it and run Linux in a VM for WSL2. If you want Linux, just run Linux.
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    This is exactly the kind of gatekeeping that holds FreeBSD back. Users asking about missing features being snarkily put down with things like "go use Linux then, we're doing just fine without feature X". This kind of toxic attitude is what pushed me away from FreeBSD in the end. They're so childish about constructive criticism sometimes, it's downright embarassing considering these are supposedly adults. Edit: It's come to my attention that this particular instance of gatekeeping came from the Linux camp, not FreeBSD. Though you can find it in the FreeBSD community too, to be sure.
mrtweetyhack 4y ago
and because jails has such low adoption, there will be fewer identified issues. Unlike docker, so many people use it, they will find many issues.
tannhaeuser 4y ago
> Docker (or rather, cgroups and image distribution) have been standardised Cgroups, namespaces have been implemented once, in Linux, by Google for their own needs. Not standardized in any meaningful interpretation of that word, just like "web standards" aren't. With now a generation of developers raised by big media and fake grassroots and staged march of progress stories, I'm wondering if that generation will be able to tell the difference, or are invested too much already.
- stingraycharles 4y ago
  Yeah, you’re right of course; my point was more that somehow we ended up with a “standard” format to store and distribute images, have plethora of tools that are able to run it, but they’re all using the same kernel fundamentals (cgroups). But all that would be a distraction from the point I was trying to make, so I simplified it a bit.
  - tannhaeuser 4y ago
    What you're meaning is that "we" have converged on tech dominated by big cloud vendors. A standard, OTOH, is something implemented by more than a single party. Unix (POSIX) used to be standardized in that way. Portability, sustainability, and avoiding dominance by a single party was always the point of Unix; as on OS, Unix wasn't particularly innovative but merely good enough and compact, even when it was new.
- babarock 4y ago
  Then what are foundations like CNCF (https://www.cncf.io/ https://www.cncf.io/) doing? I'm asking honestly, if there's any difference between CNCF and any other standards governing body.

nullify88 4y ago

Perhaps VHS vs Betamax is a suitable equivalent to FreeBSD vs Linux.

philistine 4y ago
Your comment implies the old trop that Beta was much better quality than VHS, but Betamax's reputation for better quality was marketing spin and conflation with Betacam, Sony's pro version. In reality, Betamax was nearly indistinguishable from VHS.
- usefulcat 4y ago
  Obviously it’s been quite a long time, but as someone whose first VCR was beta, this rings true. If nothing else, I definitely don’t remember a noticeable quality difference when we later switched to VHS.

nmz 4y ago

Nobody ever adopts it because nobody wants to support it, ergo nobody ever adopts it and nothing ever improves. Gotta love this little cycle of mediocrity the software world has going on.

astrobe_ 4y ago
This type of circular argument sometimes hit a nerve when it about a thing cares about, but lets remember that the literal sense of "mediocre" is "middle" or "average", so its kind of a tautology to say that in general, software is average. It takes true nerds (or "geek" in the sense it had around 2000, when it was still a bit derogatory and not yet a fashionable identity marker) to go off the beaten path.
- nmz 4y ago
  Guess I mispoke, if everyone adopted it, then that quality of software would become the new average. this software is just inferior, which in software usually means that its harmful. Adj. 1. mediocre - moderate to inferior in quality; "they improved the quality from mediocre to above average"

mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago

I think one of the biggest mistakes the FreeBSD team made(in terms of more widestream adoption) was abandoning the Linux syscall table layer. It's still there, but it's stuck on 2.6.x last time I looked. It's a lot to maintain, yes, but it would help secure a lot more users like me, who are highly technical, potential contributors, who like a lot of the features(jails, better ZFS integration, easy to set up dtrace support etc), but also like to play around with bleeding edge software that tends to support Linux/OS X first, and maybe BSDs by accident, if you're lucky. I think keeping this layer in development, maybe having a similar setup to SmartOS, letting you set up "Linux jails" or something like that, would significantly help adoption in the desktop/workstation space. This would of course lead to recruiting more developers, and so on. Drivers are trickier, but I actually never had driver issues the last time I used FreeBSD as a daily driver(for about 6 months a few years ago, until I ran back to Linux with my tail between my legs). It would be nice if at some point many decades ago, the Unix world had agreed on a standardised kernel API for modular drivers, so that drivers could more easily be ported between kernels, but it's way too late for that at this point I guess. And maybe not even technically feasible, but I'm not qualified to comment on that.

fuckstick 4y ago
> It's a lot to maintain, yes, but it would help secure a lot more users like me, What an understatement. The modern Linux syscalls are tightly coupled to the implementation of Linux. Special fds, io_uring, robust lists, etc etc … There’s a reason why Microsoft said fuck it and run Linux in a VM for WSL2. If you want Linux, just run Linux.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  This is exactly the kind of gatekeeping that holds FreeBSD back. Users asking about missing features being snarkily put down with things like "go use Linux then, we're doing just fine without feature X". This kind of toxic attitude is what pushed me away from FreeBSD in the end. They're so childish about constructive criticism sometimes, it's downright embarassing considering these are supposedly adults. Edit: It's come to my attention that this particular instance of gatekeeping came from the Linux camp, not FreeBSD. Though you can find it in the FreeBSD community too, to be sure.

mrtweetyhack 4y ago

and because jails has such low adoption, there will be fewer identified issues. Unlike docker, so many people use it, they will find many issues.

tannhaeuser 4y ago

> Docker (or rather, cgroups and image distribution) have been standardised Cgroups, namespaces have been implemented once, in Linux, by Google for their own needs. Not standardized in any meaningful interpretation of that word, just like "web standards" aren't. With now a generation of developers raised by big media and fake grassroots and staged march of progress stories, I'm wondering if that generation will be able to tell the difference, or are invested too much already.

stingraycharles 4y ago
Yeah, you’re right of course; my point was more that somehow we ended up with a “standard” format to store and distribute images, have plethora of tools that are able to run it, but they’re all using the same kernel fundamentals (cgroups). But all that would be a distraction from the point I was trying to make, so I simplified it a bit.
- tannhaeuser 4y ago
  What you're meaning is that "we" have converged on tech dominated by big cloud vendors. A standard, OTOH, is something implemented by more than a single party. Unix (POSIX) used to be standardized in that way. Portability, sustainability, and avoiding dominance by a single party was always the point of Unix; as on OS, Unix wasn't particularly innovative but merely good enough and compact, even when it was new.
babarock 4y ago
Then what are foundations like CNCF (https://www.cncf.io/ https://www.cncf.io/) doing? I'm asking honestly, if there's any difference between CNCF and any other standards governing body.